LORD NORTHBROOK'S COUP D'ETAT.
TORD NORTHBROOK is in earnest now; that much at least is clear. The telegrams of Wednesday, received in Lon- don with so little attention, really signify that he has exerted his power as Viceroy in the most decided, not to say despotic fashion ; has superseded Sir George Campbell, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in his most important duties, and has entrusted the whole control of the campaign against the famine to a member of his own Cabinet. Sir Richard Temple is to " report " to the Lieutenant-Governor as matter of courtesy, but he is ap- pointed by the Viceroy, is selected from his own Cabinet, and is obviously entrusted with powers which in practice will override those of the Lieutenant-Governor. No man in his senses, and least of all Sir Richard Temple, would have taken upon himself such a responsibility—which he could, of course,, have declined, men of his rank in the Service not being managed by direct orders—without the right to appoint his underlings, to give direct and final orders of the most decided character, and to act independently of any authority except the Viceroy. Indeed, it would appear from the terms of the Gazette that he is appointed Associate Lieutenant-Governor, an office utterly unknown in India, and which could only have been created under the sort of direct sovereignty which the Viceroy in extremis is entitled to exercise everywhere except in Madras and Bombay, where, to per- form such an act, he must either be personally present, or exercise the strange power granted him under the last regu- lating Act of issuing a decree which for six months shall have all the force of an Act of Parliament. Henceforth Sir G. Campbell has no further responsibility for the famine, which rests primarily upon Sir Richard Temple, and ultimately with its whole force upon Lord Northbrook himself.
The motives of this extraordinary act of power—which, though perfectly legal, has no precedent in the last quarter of a century, and indeed no precedent at all since the time when Lord Wellesley, indignant at the pusillanimity of the Madras Government, travelled into the Presidency to compel the Governor to declare war on Tippoo Sahib—are not very far to seek. Sir George Campbell is very ill, so ill that his medical advisers have positively refused to attend him if he stays beyond March, and is not in close harmony with the Viceroy as to the steps immediately to be taken. He obeys orders of course, but of course also he obeys them without cordial or hearty approval. He has asked pertinaciously for immense measures of precaution, some of which have been taken ; while others, such as the prohibition of exportation, have been regarded as too ruinous to the future of the country, and too flagrantly unjast towards the districts not yet stricken. The Viceroy, either aware that Sir G. Campbell was too ill to do the special work suddenly thrust upon his shoulders, or wearied of opposition to a settled policy, has determined to make the new work a special function, and has naturally selected Sir Richard Temple to
We hold, then, that the Government are shrinking from a perform it. We say naturally,—first, because Sir Richard has evidently won the confidence of the Viceroy; and secondly, because he will, by April at latest, be Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, and any break in his authority over all persons connected with the famine will thereby be avoided.
The step taken is perfectly legal, for the power to take districts out of a Lieutenant-Governorship has been repeatedly exercised ; and as the Viceroy can dismiss a Lieutenant-Governor, he can of course appoint two men at once to fulfil the func- tion, and we need not stop to discuss whether so unusual an act is pleasant or not to Sir George Campbell. It may be a severe blow or a necessary relief, for anything we know, or he may himself have suggested it; and at all events, in a
crisis like the Bengal Famine, individuals must, if the public welfare requires it, be trampled- out like snow- heaps, while the Viceroy 'alone can decide whether the necessity exists or not. We should say it did not, believing Sir George Campbell to have taken from the first the right, that is, the pessimist view of the situation ; but Lord Northbrook has the right to decide, and if he believes that Sir Richard Temple can save the people, and that Sir George Campbell cannot, whether from illness or ill-counsel, he is per- fectly right to postpone claims of any sort, and even the ordinary Constitution of his Empire, to that supreme necessity. But that his responsibility is thereby terribly increased cannot be denied, any more than the fact that one-half the Anglo-Indian world will regard his selection with a feeling of dismay. That he has chosen the most fit or the most unfit man in India, is patent to all who know Sir Richard Temple, and we doubt if there are five men in the entire Services who will venture to say peremptorily which he is.
Sir Richard Temple is, to the great majority of his own service, as well as of outsiders, a kind of puzzle or enigma, which they hardly expect to solve. That there is much, very much, to be said in his favour, they all admit. He has un- daunted courage, invincible energy, capacity for securing obe- dience, and a talent rising almost to a genius for making himself acceptable to his chiefs. Lord Lawrence, LordDalhousie, Lord Canning, Lord Mayo, we believe, and now evidently Lord Northbrook, have all expressed the same opinion of him and his abilities. He was the best Secretary Lord Lawrence ever found ; is said, as an administrator, to have turned the Central Provinces from a jungle into a civilised province of the State, and certainly didscouvert it from a burdensome acquisition into a revenue-producing country. His power with his pen is as notorious as that of Warren Hastings, " whom nobody," as Francis wrote, " could answer," while he can slave at his work like the late Lord Derby when something he chose to do had actually to be done. But he undoubtedly failed as Finance Minister, and India rings with stories of his ways, his bizarre vanities—as, for example, his striking a medal in honour of his own Nagpore Exhibition, and putting his own head on it (laurelled), instead of the Sovereign's—and his strange, cynical sayings, one of which has probably done him more harm than all his despatches have done good. His opponents declare that he is the person he so precisely resembles, viz., the late Emperor Napoleon,—that he has energy rather than largeness of thought, that he produces cheerful obedience rather by selecting inferior men than by attracting the strong, that he is apt to be found unprepared when preparation is most needed, and that, above all, he uses to excess his power of writing bulletins. The latter charge is true, and we would warn all Members of Parliament and Missionary Societies to obtain the most exact returns from their friends or agencies, to check the statements we shall shortly have ; but for ourselves, we should, but for one point, incline strongly to the belief of the high officials, who have invariably, or almost invariably, stood by him heartily, and who must know his capacities. We do not distrust his energy, his resourcefulness, or his ability to make men work ; but we do distrust his interest in saving Bengalee lives. Not that he is a man hostile to natives. He will probably do his utmost to save the Beharees, who are soldiers by tradition and instinct ; but he has, we imagine, some of that dislike of the intelligent but non-fighting Bengalees which is so marked a feature in the character of North-West Civilians, and which once, we are told, induced him to say that Bengalee opposition to taxation mattered nothing, for Bengalees would not rebel. He may never have said it, but both the character of the man and the manner of his selection and his history inspire us with a fear that he will look too carefully to the Treasury and guird the State too much against the people. He may not, however, for he probably understands better than any man in India what this country expects of her Government, and how com- pletely he will himself be held responsible ; and if he under- stands it, there is no doubt of his strong action in the direction desired by the English rather than the Indian politicians. The chance he has longed for all his life, of doing some work visible in Britain, is fairly before him now, and Parliament has at least this certainty, that it can fix responsibility. The absolute Viceroy has overridden etiquette, tradition, and official pro- prieties to find his own agent, and the famine-stricken people of Behar and Bengal are in the hands of Lord Northbrook and Sir Richard Temple. How terrible their task will be may be guessed from the following little paragraph, written by an eye- witness, in the Post :—" The difficulties of transport are not less than I stated they would be. It is found that the rail- way can convey only 2,000 tons a day at its best, and that, considering the pressure of other traffic, it could not do this long. Bullock-carts are with difficulty obtained. Water con- veyance, which is the least expensive and most used, begins to present many inconveniences. All but the large rivers are fast drying up. Only one who is accustomed to the rising and falling of Indian rivers can have any idea of the great rivers that sink in a month into a shallow, elongated, motionless lake, through which all sailing is stopped by numerous mud- banks."
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